Monday, October 31, 2016

The Uber Drivers Guild, Funded By Uber, Promises Not To Strike

From Bloomberg:

If your Uber driver ever seems excessively paranoid about not getting
a five-star rating or outright begs you for one, there’s a reason.
Drivers who find their accounts deactivated by the company have long
complained that the appeals process seems opaque and tough to resolve in
their favor. That may be about to change: Uber says that by the end of
the year, drivers in New York City will be able to appeal deactivations
to panels of other drivers in meetings refereed by the American Arbitration Association. Professional labor representatives will argue their cases at no cost to the drivers.

“We
don’t have a successful business if we don’t have enough happy,
productive, motivated drivers,” says David Plouffe, the Uber adviser who
guided Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. “We’re listening.”

There’s
more than one catch. The drivers’ advocates will be provided by a quasi
union called the Independent Drivers Guild, which Uber funds. Uber and
the IDG will determine which drivers can sit on the panels.

Uber
unveiled the IDG in New York this spring in partnership with the
International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), a union
that has organized other black-car drivers. The machinists say the IDG
represents all 40,000-plus Uber drivers in the city. Besides
arbitration, it offers them such perks as discounted legal assistance
and chances to air grievances at monthly meetings with Uber officials.

The
IDG isn’t a traditional union. Drivers didn’t vote for it. It has no
formal collective-bargaining rights. And its very existence helps the
company resist formal unionization, says Arun Sundararajan, a business
professor at New York University who researches the economics of the
tech industry. “This is just them planting something in the ground that
might deter more contentious forms of labor organizing,” he says.

Uber says the guild boosts its efforts to attract and retain drivers.
The IDG successfully advocated for the arbitration association’s role
in the New York deactivation hearings; in Seattle, only Uber oversees
the hearings. James Conigliaro Jr., the IDG’s founder and regional
general counsel for the machinists’ union, says the guild has won more concrete benefits
for Uber drivers than any formal union. The guild has helped bring Uber
management to the table, says driver and IDG organizer Muhammad Barlas.
“When they are more comfortable, it’s easier to try and negotiate with
them,” he says.

In return, the IDG won’t instigate strikes or try
to get the government to treat drivers as employees with the right to
unionize. (Uber says they’re independent contractors, with no such right.)
If a government official grants the drivers those rights, the IDG can
pull out of the agreement; otherwise, it has agreed it won’t try to form
a traditional union before the deal expires in 2021. Uber and the guild
say they’ll jointly lobby the state legislature for more favorable tax
treatment for Uber rides. If the taxes fall, Uber says, it will return
the savings to drivers, including by contributing to a new IDG-managed
benefits fund....MORE